For a true reset

India should focus on getting key projects off the ground in Nepal

The reassuring expressions of renewed ties and friendship following Nepal’s Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli’s meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi ended many months of suspicion and recriminations. On the face of it, the meeting — billed as a “reset” — offers hope for bettering ties in more fundamental ways. The building of a link between the Indian border town of Raxaul and Kathmandu could be a good start, as would completing the 900 Mw, $1.5 billion Arun III hydro-electric project in eastern Nepal. Both projects would go a long way towards cementing historical ties that have been vitiated over the past few years by a crisis following the adoption of a new constitution that appeared to have blindsided the external affairs ministry and the intelligence agencies. The proximate cause was the dilution of the rights of Madhesis, the low-land inhabiting people traditionally allied to India. This was interpreted as a means of diminishing Indian influence in Kathmandu and provoked a sharp reaction from New Delhi, which Kathmandu saw as an unwarranted intrusion into its internal affairs. The blockade of fuel and food supplies to Nepal that followed inflicted deep fault-lines in ties between the two countries and caused a definitive “pivot” to Beijing without noticeably enhancing the Madhesi cause. The Indian position, however, has been that it was done autonomously by Madhesis, and India had no hand in it.

Mr Oli, who suspected India’s hand behind his ouster during his first stint as prime minister in 2016, came to power in 2017 on the twin platforms of development and ultra-nationalism. He and his Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) openly regard China as a bulwark against Indian intimidation. In his first term, he promptly signed on to the Belt and Road Initiative to expand connectivity to Chinese ports and railheads plus a mega-hydroelectric project. The deepening of these ties was evident this March when Nepal called for efforts to reintegrate Pakistan, China’s client state, back into the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation after the grouping had boycotted the 2016 summit in that country at India’s behest. Indeed, the fact that Mr Oli will be visiting China shortly after his New Delhi sojourn has encouraged lingering doubts about the sustainability of the new-found amity between India and Nepal. 

Most of these doubts centre around India’s well-established inability to complete projects on time and within cost. This record looks worse when set against China’s in building projects of greater size and complexity with formidable ease. It is worth noting that till recently, this chronic inefficiency in project implementation mattered less because of the close people-to-people ties between India and Nepal — some 1.5 million Nepalese live and work in India and as Hindu-majority nations, both countries share close religio-cultural ties. But the rupture caused by the blockade has been deep — it is significant that Mr Oli spoke of “trust” and “dignity” in relations between the two nations ahead of his New Delhi visit — and will require much more nuanced diplomacy to heal. Mr Oli’s invitation to Mr Modi to visit Kathmandu offers a chance for a genuine “reset”. A laser focus on getting some significant projects off the ground would serve as ample demonstration to the Nepalese of India’s sincerity.